Daily Reviews Summary 04/29/09

We can only note that this motherboard is just as attractive to users as the previous model from ASUS with this chipset. Perhaps it's a bit more interesting owing to its better integrated audio. In other respects, it has both pros and cons, too insignificant to affect your choice.

AMD Athlon X2 7850 BE ReviewBjorn3D takes a look at the AMD Athlon X2 7850 BE

Today we have the AMD Athlon X2 7850 BE, the big brother to the X2 7750. With an unlocked multiplier, and 64nm technology AMD plans on going head to head with the older Core 2 dual cores, as well as replaceing the older high end X2's. This new CPU also features L3 cache, which should improve scores in all kinds of tests, along with gameing.

The question remains, can the new Athon compete with the older X2's? Or is this another broken promise by AMD.

CPU Cooling has advanced somewhat in recent years with many different techniques being tried and tested. A relatively new company, Reeven, currently offer two direct heat-pipe CPU Coolers. Today, we've been luckily enough to acquire one such cooler, the RCCT-0901S. Let's see if it performs to the same specification of more well-known CPU Coolers.

Today for review I have the Pico p1 Micro Projector from AAXA technologies. This thing is small, not much larger than a smartphone, it will fit in the palm of your hand. The Pico P1 has a few great features like a built-in media player, dual power, long battery life, small and portable of course and it can also connect to devices like ipods, iPhones, cameras and most anything with an RCA style audio/video output. Those features don't mean much though is the picture quality isn't good, so continue on to learn more about the Pico P1

We have been talking about NVIDIA's Ion since late last year when news first broke of the ultra small form factor platform. At the time, NVIDIA's tiny Atom-powered prototype system wasn't even called Ion yet, but images of the miniscule motherboard that would eventually be used in the reference platform had already surfaced and the community was buzzing with interest. One of the major concerns with most netbooks and nettops was their relatively weak integrated graphics solutions, and Ion would potentially address that concern.

Around the time when Ion was first announced, there was some scuttlebutt that Intel "disapproved" of the platform and that the company wouldn't sell OEMs Atom processors separately, without pairing them to an accompanying Intel chipset. Those rumors were soon squashed, however, because Intel does in fact sell Atom processors independent of a chipset. Although, we think it's still pretty safe to say Intel isn't exactly thrilled with Ion's existence.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Ion though, the platform is moving closer to public availability. We took a look at NVIDIA's Ion reference system a couple of months back and in our conclusion stated that "we want one - preferably sooner than later". Well, the wait is almost over as the first publicly announced Ion design win has landed in the HotHardware labs, Acer's slick Aspire Revo...

Music lovers often look to replace the cheap earphones that come with their MP3 players right away. For the real audiophile what qualifies, as a good set of earphones for the normal user is sub-par. The Audiophile often spends more on their headphones than they do the MP3 player. Today we are going to look at the new Shure SE115 Sound Isolating Earphones. These earphones are available in several colors and offer lots of features for music lovers. Read on to find out how well the Shure SE115 Sound Isolating Earphones perform.

Microsoft has been vigorously working to make Windows 7 their best operating system yet. One of their primary objectives with Windows 7 was to make it as compatible as possible with all existing devices right out of the box, which was what Vista was given a bad rap for not doing. TechReviewSource.com installed the Release Candidate of Windows 7 on one of our desktop computers and have test driven it in a production environment. This allowed us to get the most accurate impression of Windows 7 RC as possible because real users will be using it primarily on their home computers and we tested the compatibility of Windows 7 with some hardware and software as well.

Sennheiser's long awaited performance IEMs are finally here. The IE7 earphones aim to take on some of the very best in-ears around with their bold design and conventional driver. For a price of $300 you get some of the best in-ears on the market today that impress with a detailed bass and full sound stage.

Only few months after presentation of Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and Dragon platform, AMD made its next move: transition to a new memory standard - DDR3. New standard, as it is in most cases, demands new socket. In this case pin configuration isn't too much different from the one present on AM2+socket, but there are differences because of which it is not possible to insert old AM2 CPU into new AM3 motherboard. As you probably know, AM3 CPUs, among which is new X4 955, are AM2/AM2+ compatible so you can use them on alder motherboards that are compatible with older DDR2 memory standard. AMD this time made a smoother transition to new memory standard without danger of losing market share.

IN WIN X-Fighter ReviewPureOverclock posted a review on the IN WIN X-Fighter

Today we will be looking at IN WIN's new mid-tower gaming chassis which could possibly take flight any second. With the Star Wars films in mind, IN WIN took the inspiration to create a case that would make Vader proud.

You may have noticed that nearly all of the exciting hard drives in the last year have been 2.5 inch drives. The 2.5 inch standard has long dominated the notebook market and is quickly starting to take over the enterprise server market. When Western Digital released the VelociRaptor analysts took notice as it marked the 2.5" invasion into desktop systems. Here we are a year later and solid state drives are all the rage. I know several enthusiasts that are using SSDs in their full towers, most of them with multiple drives in either RAID 0 or RAID 5.

Other than rack mounted servers I have yet to see a desktop system come with an efficient 2.5" mounting system for these drives. Several companies make adapters but most were designed to fit a floppy disk drive into a 5.25" CDROM bay. Vizo has noticed this same issue and decided to do something about it.